The Famous Living Dead: Wednesday's Child
by Adellade
Summary: SEQUEL FIC; The day Ichabod Crane's child was born, a stone angel wept.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer.**

**I do not own Sleepy Hollow. The characters and movie plot of Tim Burton's 1999 motion picture Sleepy Hollow is the property of their respective owners. I acknowledge that they do not belong to me. This is a Sleepy Hollow fiction, introducing the character of Inspector Frederick Abberline from the movie, From Hell.**

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**NOTE; Seeing as this is a sequel fic, it's not recommended if you haven't read 'The Famous Living Dead' as some scenes may become confusing. Contains malexmale pairing, a child born through mpreg and cursing.**

******Collaberation with EmiStaw13y**

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There had been a church in the village ever since it became a village: never many of them, one or two at most in a generation; not a prolific stock, but a hardy and persistent one. The church was surrounded by graves, tombs and stone statues each iconic. The gravestones on the far edge of the yard could still to be seen in the old burying-ground: they had been the first to be buried there. The old stone was sunk half-way in the earth, and was gray with moss and lichens; but the inscriptions were still legible, if one looked close, and had patience to decipher the crabbed text. Then a pair of carved hands, clasped as in sign of friendship or loyalty. Standing on a stone foundation amoungst the graves was a tall, elegant carving of an angel. Mighty wings outspread and arms crossed reclusive across her chest, like a great stone martyr.

The winter, when it came, was hard. There was not so much snow as in milder seasons, but the cold held without breaking, week after week: clear weather; no wind, but the air taking the breath from the dryness of it, and in the evening the haze hanging blue and low that tells of intensest cold. As the snow fell, it remained. The drifts and hollows never changed their shape, as in a soft or a windy season, but seemed fixed as the sombre angel was for all time. As the night passed into morning, into the cold blue light of the winter moon and the bright hard glitter of the winter sun, her face was always there, and her absent eyes took an even sadder charm - then quite suddenly, a tear - warm, fell from her hollow socket down the surface of her cold cheek. To take it was a strange and dreadful thing to see.

It was a Wednesday into December, the day Ichabod Crane's daughter was born.


	2. Just Dreams

**Disclaimer.**

**I do not own Sleepy Hollow. The characters and movie plot of Tim Burton's 1999 motion picture Sleepy Hollow is the property of their respective owners. I acknowledge that they do not belong to me. This is a Sleepy Hollow fiction, introducing the character of Inspector Frederick Abberline from the movie, From Hell.**

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******Collaberation with EmiStaw13y**

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'Put out tha' light.'

'Why?

'Cuz m'tryin' t'sleep.'

'I'm reading.'

'Well go downstaris 'n read.'

Ichabod had, with all his apprehensiveness of things, an extraordinary amount of discernment of people; he could discern feelings that had no existence. He could not see Abberline's eyes, the man was rolled lamely on his side with his back to him. Sighing at the tiresome article, he set down his book with a 'Fine,' in his plaintive tone, edged with irritation, and lay down. Turning away from the bed's centre himself and frowning his eyes closed.

Abberline glanced over his shoulder, eye partly open. How unsuited a pair they were, in many ways. Unsuited, but what did it matter? Ichabod's queer, soft voice was in his ears, his lean, clever, face swam on the rushing tides of night. His careful clothes, the pockets bulging with books and papers, his easily ruffled black hair - they all merged for him into the infinitely absurd, infinitely delightful, infinitely loved Ichabod, who was pretending to sleep.

Shuffling, Abberline turned his body and snuck closer to him. Putting his arm round his shoulder as he lay on the bed's edge; he was comforting him like a child. He leant a soft cheek against Ichabod's shoulder, 'D'nt get all moody on me.'

Absolute silence momentarily fell, Ichabod pretending not to hear him though his lips were very close to his ear. The silence continued even as Abberline invoked him again, his face fell twisted in distaste at the ensued scene and sitting up a little, look down to Ichabod, his eyes closed and head still bent down as if he didn't much like the scene him now he had brought it about.

Abberline abruptly kicked Ichabod with his knee, gathering at the back of his legs which made him start and turn, '_Ow_! What?'

'Stop ignorin' me.'

Ichabod told him shortly, and in plain words, all the whilst mocking his Abberline's previous tones, '_I'm trying to sleep_.'

'Very funny,' He looked at Ichabod; his manner, though distant, was not now unfriendly; perhaps, having gained his object, there was room for compassion. Leaning his cheek back onto his shoulder and letting his voice laze, 'What day's it?'

'Tuesday,' He uttered back as he felt Abberline stroking delicately the side of his face with the back of his fingers. A symbol of prosperous content.

'Y'workin' tommorow?'

'Yes.'

Abberline sighed, ceasing his petting hand and lay so still behind Ichabod, with an arm folded round him. 'Seems that no matter 'ow hard I try, I can't find work 'ere.'

Ichabod was turning that thought over in his mind, but not just in the way that would disturb him. 'We have plenty of money, Frederick.'

'Ye' .. but I feel so bloody useless, sittin' 'ere all day. Market stalls d'nt want me, traders d'nt want me .. bloody hell I bet even the whore house w'nt take me.'

Ichabod uttered a chuckle respectively, eyes smiling behind his closed eyes, 'If there were such a house here to take you.'

Only one thought came to Abberline, but that thought filled his whole mind, 'Seems though all me uses went the day I quit the Whitechapel Mets,'

'_Mets_?'

'Yeah, y'know .. metropolitan. Police.'

Success was Abberline's role; one did not willingly imagine him failing. If heroes fail, one must not let them know it. Ichabod turned his face over his shoulder, so white about the cheeks and lips as he touched sweetly his budded lips onto Abberline's cheek, 'Stop concerning yourself. Sleep.'

'Kiss me g'night then.' He smirked, and took him at cross purposes, these two, across the gulf of sixteen years, and with the best will in the world could not hope to understand, either of them, what the other was really at, and now they lay in their shared bedroom, looking across a gulf of sixteen seconds and saying nothing at all, words did not carry as far as a loving kiss could. Ichabod's lips opened, expecting him and their mouths pressed together, so softly to begin with but Abberline clearly wanted him, brought out into the day as if the subject itself did not need more airing. They believed that love would make them free, and so they had been living for years. Senses of touch, smell and sound were heightened, making up for the complete blackness that the fabric duvet left them in, and just as Abberline's hands went to run lightly over his body - a scream pierced into the room and made them both flinch, breaking apart from the kiss and looking at each other strangely.

'What was that?' Ichabod whispered, uneasiness tripping off his sweet lips.

'Sound like anoth'r bad dream.' Falteringly, his brown eyes dropped on the ground, with only now and

then a timid, appealing glance at Ichabod as he eased away the quilt. He had tried to force his voice back into its usual tone, tried even to speak gently, though his heart was still beating so wildly at the way that scream had entered, sweet notes made chilling. He stood from the bed and looked at Ichabod, 'Look, I'll go. You go t'sleep, get some rest.'

As Abbberline came away, Ichabod's kindly eyes turned from him to the candle on the bedside table, then looked up back to him with a nervous movement. His sweet tempered companionableness had been oddly obscured. Perhaps he was tired to death, or perhaps there was a look on his face that said he should go too. But nonetheless he wettened his finger tips and pinched out the candlelight, and lay down, drawing the sheets over his ears. Abberline let himself out of the room, and could not help stop to look out the first window. The lagoon waters were smooth like glass, and pale, and unflushed as yet with night. Dark lines of stakes marked the blue shipways that ran out to open sea, and down them plied the ships, spreading painted wings to the evening breeze.

The crystal peace of the lagoon was shattered once again as another desperate shriek tore through the hallway, and immediately he returned from the limpid loveliness of smooth water and pushed himself with more urgency toward a room that was not far. He entered, and a pall of silence seemed to descend upon that room, generally so cheerful: the sleeping girl in her bed cowered under it, and seemed to shrink visibly under her bed sheets.

'Babe,' Abberline uttered, leaving the door open behind him. 'You awake?'

Rebecca had grown finely over the years, becoming a young woman of sixteen. She wore a long heather nightgown. Her face was like nothing that had been seen in those parts before, and the beauty of it seemed to strike cold to any heart whenever one looked at her, standing and gazing with unwilling eyes. She had that clear, bright whiteness of skin, and only here and there among these; whiteness as of fire behind alabaster. Her hair was very dark, long and thick, and her lashes lay like jet on her cheek with her closed eyes. Abberline walked leisurely at her bedside, watching her pretty and appealing even in her sleep. Was he not a professing, caring father, bound by the strictest ties? Yes. He saw fear grow under her eyes as her subtly afraid face twisted, ready to cry out again, just as the love grew in his own heart at that moment. Love, what sort of word was that for him to be using, even in his mind? Rudely, terror broke in upon her pleasant face and she opened her mouth, letting loose another long, loud piercing cry.

Abberline instantly took her shoulders, shaking them. 'C'mon wake up,' It hurt his feelings to see her like this, taunted even in the sanctity in her dreams. He continued to shake her until she opened quietened and opened her eyes, looking a little dazed like a deer in fright. When she raised her eyes, they were seen to be dark and soft, too; but with what fire in their depths, what sunny light of freshness.

'You aw'right?' He asked her when she said nothing.

Rebecca sat up from once she lay, slowly shuffling up and letting her head sink for a moment, looking sidelong at Abberline. Very certainly she loved him, with all her imagination and all her mind, and she would have given him more than all that was hers. Very surely and truly she loved Ichabod too, her two parents who raised her her whole life. She still felt rather dazed, as if someone had hit her a blow on the head. One was ostensibly on Rebecca's side, against honesty, against decency, against all the world.

'I'm alright, dad.' She said sleepily, her half-smile to denote admiration. He couldn't quite believe she wanted to smile. Pretty little girls often make this error.

'I didn't know what t'fink by the sounds of ye.'

'I'm sorry,' She said right away, like she had been waiting for the chance.

Abberline said nothing at first, settling down with his sad smile to something which mattered more than the news in the papers. How she looked, sitting there, the little slender figure quavering under her pale nightdress, her pretty head bent down, dark eyes looking here and there, bright and shy, like those of a wild creature so gentle in its nature that it knew no fear. If only.

'Your startin' t'worry me, Babe. This ain't the first time you've woke up singin' out.'

The pet name, Babe, was something Abberline had called the girl all her life. He supposed it was because since babyhood she was always a figure not without grace and dignity, slenderly limbed and splendid; his babe. Rebecca was silent, looking low with hunted, despairing eyes. There was nothing to do, no word to say that would help. 'I don't mean to worry you or father.'

So the good soul continued soothing the girl, who said no word after that, and gazed at him with wide eyes; Abberline's heart was heavy within her, 'Do y'want me t'sit wiv you for abit?'

The next thing she said, in a gentle, unsurprised voice, came with a slow shake of her head. 'No dad, I think .. I think I will sleep.' She lay back into her pillow and looked so firm and practical, that nice face, so fair and plump and shrewd, but the look in her eyes, could sometimes catch a strange gleam.

Abberline looked doubtful, 'Y'sure? You alright now?'

Over the dark and friendly eyes that lit her small face, her half wistful brows were cocked with a kind of sad and gentle humour, the same humour that twitched at the corners of her minute as she tried to reassure him, and herself. 'Yes.'

'Aw'right babe,' He lowered forward and kissed her forehead, just above the eyebrow, the girl meeting his half-inquiring, half-trusting, wholly friendly and sympathetic regard. Moving away, he stopped just at the door and uttered a, 'G'night,' before leaving back to his own bed.

The man waited some moments outside her door, and with help from his sense of responsibility managed to resist guarding her and walking forward. He began to imagine terrible things; imagination was his strong point. A wide and quick receptiveness gathered within him as he returned down into the warmth of his bed and law wakeful, a considerable power of appreciation and assimilation, made his mind worry for the dear girl that corrupted his encouragement to sleep, yet still it did not hinder his power of performance. His eyes closed and he let out a long breath.

'Is she alright?' The man whispered next him, voice as light as the breeze that might blow from a calm sea. It appeared Ichabod had failed to fall asleep himself, and at first Abberline said nothing, a little because he really didn't think he could quite make up his mind to another long and strong pull, but chiefly because of Ichabod and his decency.

'Yeah .. ' He said, settling a bent arm comfortably behind his head. 'Jus' a bad dream,'

'Another bad dream.' Ichabod declared indignantly, turning over and his face just as concerned as Abberline expected it to be, his mind was of that sort when it fell foul to his only child. His eyes seemed to blare out, like colours in a parade. 'I worry for her, Frederick. Just two nights ago I found her clutching her at blankets so hard, she almost tore them. What must go through her head?'

'She'll be fine.' It should have sounded correct in his own mind, hard and clear not smudgy and vague, as with some of his other collective thoughts. 'Every'un has bad dreams now an' again, Becky's just learnin' t'grow out of it I 'fink.'

'All the same, ' Ichabod's eyes turned up to the ceiling, performing little to rest himself. Defeated dreams lived in his eyes; but to light them there burned perpetually the deep and luminous lamps of undefeated mirth. 'I wish I knew what she dreamt.'


	3. Life

**Disclaimer.**

**I do not own Sleepy Hollow. The characters and movie plot of Tim Burton's 1999 motion picture Sleepy Hollow is the property of their respective owners. I acknowledge that they do not belong to me. This is a Sleepy Hollow fiction, introducing the character of Inspector Frederick Abberline from the movie, From Hell.**

* * *

******Collaberation with EmiStaw13y**

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Life. Life stirring and waking everywhere, in sky and earth; soft clouds sweeping across the blue, softening its cold brightness, dropping rain as they go; sap creeping through the ice-bound stems, slowly at first, then running freely, bidding the tree awake and be at its work, push out the velvet pouch that holds the yellow catkin, swell and polish the pointed leaf-buds: life working silently under the ground, brown seeds opening their leaves to make way for the tender shoot that shall draw nourishment from them and push its way on and up while they die content, their work being done; roots creeping here and there, threading their way through the earth, softening, loosening, sucking up moisture and sending it aloft to carry on the great work,--life everywhere, pulsing in silent throbs, the heart-beats of spring.  
Ichabod stood in his doorway with a cup of tea in hand, hearing whispers in the breeze, but knew not what they meant; seeing a radiance in the air that was not all sunlight. It had to end sometime; even that winter could not last forever. The iron grasp relaxed: fitfully at first, with grim clutches and snatches at its prey, gripping it the closer because it knew the time was near when all power would go, drop off like a garment, melt away like a stream.

'Morning,' Rebecca chimed from behind him, as passive as those whispers but it startled him nonetheless, wheeling about and quickly letting out breath that might have been a sharp sigh or a gentle whistle, and very near dropped his tea.

Between a laugh and a sleepy yawn, she commented, 'You startle awfully easily, father.'

She left a queer silence behind her. When it had lasted for a moment, Ichabod looked up from his inspection and collected his words, draining his cup and leaving his face with a covert smile, 'You've woken early.'

'As have you,'

Ichabod included a refined nod, 'Cannot say I slept alot,.' He waited a moment, and looked to her carefully, 'Neither did you by the sounds of last night.'

And it showed in her face, eyes dark-ringed and lacking their bright lights. Hair lank and hanging. The girl looked away a moment, strained, then returned half-smiling. 'Just a dream, thats all.'

'One of many,' Ichabod smiled a little sad smile at her, she was more than ever a child, blindly reaching out for help. He touched his daughter's cheek with the back of his index finger, beauty was there. Such tragedy, such pity, that they lay like a heavy weight in their eyes. If one could do anything to help .. 'Do not suffer, darling. Silence is not all golden.'

Rebecca stood before him, her strained face had softened and relaxed. She patted him softly on the wrist and he passed her a smile of curious pity. There ensued an uncomfortable scene, such as may readily be imagined. She took his cup, 'Let me make you another tea.'

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'Complexes,' read Ichabod, 'are of all sorts and sizes.' And there was a ink drawing of four of them in a row, looking like netted cherry trees whose nets have got entangled with each other. So that was what they were like. Ichabod had previously thought of them as being more of the nature of noxious insects, or fibrous growths with infinite ramifications. Slim young trees.

'A complex is characterised, and its elements are bound together by a specific emotional tone, experienced as feeling when the complex is aroused. Apart from the mental processes and corresponding actions depending on purely rational mental systems, it is through complexes that the typical mental process works, the particular complex representing the particular set of mental elements involved in the process which begins with perception and cognition and ends with the corresponding conation.'

He looked up from over the book, and his class seemed to, if possible, understand less the more he read. Complexes seemed very difficult things, and his students had never been clever. Yet he was still hoping they would understand in a moment. If one has such things, and everyone has, he had learnt - one ought to be able to understand them. Yet why? One didn't understand ones bodily internal growths; one left them to ones' doctor. There were doctors who explained complexes to people, which Ichabod thought a revolting idea. It would surely make them worse, not better. Since leaving New York, Ichabod had hung up his constables' baton and eventually in Dorset, become a schoolmaster - at his daughters' very school, turning his path to the road that educates. Surely it would be better to have Rebecca be raised around intelligent beings, than the brutes he had left behind in the city sixteen years ago.

He cleared his throat and set the book down with his white hand, 'Would anyone like to comment on that?'

Silence.

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It was a perfect afternoon, the air a-lit with bird-songs, and full of the perfume of early flowers. The unchanging snow-forms began to shift, the keen outlines wavered, grew indistinct, fell into ruin, as the sun grew warm again, and sent down rays that were no longer like lances of diamond. The glittering face in the hollow of the great drift lost its watchful look, softened, grew dim and blurred; one morning it was gone.

Abberline was reclined in a seat in his home, alone with Ichabod and Rebecca at the school. He hovered a cigarette, as always, near his mouth but his lips were thin pressed together as he looked down at his lap. Lying in it, a letter - from the office of Sir Charles Warren, Whitechapel. He was aware of something new in the air as he breathed. Still cold, but with a difference; there was a breathing as of dread, where all had been dry, cold. The letter had come in the morning, Rebecca had brought it in from the doorstep before leaving with Ichabod, and Abberline had been very reluctant to open it.

'Y'just couldn't leave me alone, Charlie.' He muttered, at last joining his lips with the cigarette tip and released quickly with fluttering breath. 'Sixteen bloody years and y'couldn't just leave me alone.'

He lifted the letter with sleepy eyes, beginning to tear the binding with a pinching of his finger and thumb, 'You're really dodgin' that coffin, ol'boy.'

Abberline's s voice trailed drowsily away, and his head dipped as he began to read. Listening to the words, and the hurrying stream of it was loud in his head. Regret turned inside him, cold and tired and envious. How quickly it was sweeping along his clear, analysising mind. His feverish heart - loving, hating - began to feed restlessly on itself, and half-died with the closing word. With the suddenness of a lower animal, he accidentally crumpled the letter as his fingers clutched. Not to be distracted from purpose.

' .. Shit.'


End file.
